From Pink Christmas Tree to Pink Valentine Tree

Hi everyone!

In this blog post, I’m sharing with you how I created a cute kitschy pink Valentine tree. Like many of you, I’m finding I am spending most of my time at home during the pandemic. I am doing things I never thought I’d ever do. Like create a Valentine tree. Like literally in no universe did I ever even entertain this idea.

Ugh how could I even make a Valentine’s Day tree in my aesthetic?!

To be honest, I really didn’t like the idea. I had my own hang-ups and decorative prejudices:

• Pine trees are for Christmas and that’s it!
• It’s too corny. Even for me.
• Ugh how could I even make a Valentine tree in my aesthetic?!

Some items have affiliate links. That means I get a tiny portion of the sales. This doesn’t affect your price and it certainly doesn’t affect my opinion on items.

Pink Christmas Tree

For pandemic Christmas, I went all out! Kitschmas is my favorite holiday after all. We had two trees. We had our tall pink Christmas tree accented with gold tinsel and vintage decorations. It was even featured in Atomic Ranch Magazine! It was our second year with this pink tree. We decorated it similarly the previous year, but throughout the year we collect vintage (tacky, sometimes ratty, and always hand-selected) decorations.

Here she is:

 

You can check out that link to my Instagram if you want to see some of my ornaments. If you want to see the uncensored anatomy of my pink tree, then check out this TikTok video. Oh wait, also Iggy Pop decorated the tree with us. Yes, the Iggy Pop. It became my most viral video on Tiktok yet.

We also had a vintage aluminum pompom tree. You can see it in this post. I always wanted one and never had any luck finding one in the wild. I decided to suck it up and buy one on eBay. If you want to save a bit of money, buy it in the off season.

About 5 days after Christmas I was sick of Christmas decorations. But I also didn’t feel like taking everything down. Who does?! So I had this thought to remove everything, but my pink tree. It could be a Valentine’s Day tree, right?

Pink Valentine Tree

My dilemmas with the Valentine tree:

• How to make a Christmas tree, not look like a Christmas tree, ya dig? Take the Christmas out of tree.
• I love vintage everything. Vintage ornaments. But Valentine’s Day trees weren’t a thing in the midcentury. Hence ornaments don’t really exist.
• I didn’t want to spend much money, because I wasn’t sure I was going to like this idea.

First thing I did was put away all the ornaments that were definitely Christmas. Santa Clauses and stockings all got packed away. I kept up a few pink ornaments. I noticed I had some bird ornaments and I thought about LOVE BIRDS. Ok that’s a start. You could argue that a red cardinal with holly is Christmassy, but I bet the cardinal that is red year around would fight you. The evergreen holly plant would beg to differ and maybe even desire to slice you with its shiny spiky leaves. I think we can agree to not disrespect holly plants or cardinals.

You could argue that a red cardinal with holly is Christmassy, but I bet the cardinal that is red year around would fight you. The evergreen holly plant would beg to differ and maybe even desire to slice you with its shiny spiky leaves.

When I saw my vintage honeycomb angel with the orange hair (above), I knew instantly she would be my muse. She is orange and red. I thought that’s it!!!! Orange will take it out of Christmastime and right into vintage i love you want to kiss you category! Orange isn’t typically thought of as a Valentine’s Day color, but I’ve had vintage cards and wrapping paper over the years that had orange with pink and red.

When it was all done, I had a bunch of ornaments that didn’t scream Christmas. I kept a few red reindeer because I made the rules. I needed to find ways to tie everything together in a not-Christmas way.

My Valentine Tree Essentials

• Garland – To give it a vintage flare I created my own orange and pink pompom garland. This was fairy easy but quite time consuming. Kevin helped a lot. I used a Clover pompom maker and used yarn in pink and orange. I can’t tell you how many pompom balls we made, but it was a lot and took days.

• Tree Topper – I debated about this so much. Ultimately I wanted Love Birds as a tree topper. But since this was in my head and not an actual tree topper, I decided to scale down my dream. I made a pompom heart instead. It turned out pretty cute, I think!

• Orange and Pink Ornaments: I had some pink ornaments left from Christmas. But barely any orange ornaments. Once again, I decided to make what I needed for this tree. These are simple felt heart forms. I placed them throughout the tree to create some kind of cohesion. I used this precut heart shaped pink felt and orange felt.

Ideas for Valentine’s Day tree ornaments that aren’t hearts:

• Flamingos! I used the same flamingos with heart sticker eyes from Airstream post.

• Birds in general. I bought these orange love birds. I typically only like to buy vintage, but I didn’t have time to.
• 

  

  

  
• Wedding cake toppers. This is the actual literal wedding cake topper we used at our wedding. I bought it at a vintage store. The Christopher Radko glass wedding ornament was a gift.

• And of course, you’re going to want lots of hearts! 😉

 

What I used to create a Pink Valentine’s Day Tree

• Pink tree. Not required, but it sure makes a pretty statement. This is the same pink tree I have.
• Pink Flamingos: I used these pink flamingos, but if you want truly authentic midcentury get these Featherstone pink flamingos!
• Garland: Clover Pompom Maker and Red Heart Yarn in Shocking Pink and Pumpkin. If you don’t have fabric scissors, these ones are great for this use.
• Felt heart decorations: I used precut cut felt hearts in pink and orange.
• Orange love bird tree ornaments.

Thank You

I hope you have a great Valentine’s Day. Bake yourself some cookies, light a candle and sit by the glow of that pink tree.

Thanks so much for reading. Please comment below! Share this with friends or on Pinterest! I’m here to answer your questions. Feel free to follow me on all social media where I update more often than this blog. I’m kind of nice and kind of smart so you can reach out to me with questions!

xo

Jamie